


Kintsugi

by MioyatThePineapple



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Childhood Friends, Drama, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Child Abuse, Slice of Life, isn't that redundant, nothing was edited. good luck, why is it other additional
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 14:31:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17982908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MioyatThePineapple/pseuds/MioyatThePineapple
Summary: It's been a few weeks since Robin's moved into town, but he still seems to be having trouble settling in. Luckily, Chrom has a plan. Step one: befriend him. Step two...Well, he doesn't really have a step two yet. He hasn't thought about it much, with all the unexpected difficulty from step one: Robin doesn't sit with the other kids and doesn't talk to them, either. Or to anyone at all, really. His preferred company seems to be the books he uses to shield himself from the rest of the world.But Chrom is determined to get through to Robin. Except...How do you make a place feel like home to someone who's never really had one?





	Kintsugi

Chrom was a child of many characteristics, and maybe too many of them were circumstantial.

It was a natural part of being human; he knew that much, at least. From an early (earlier) age, he’d figured out that people- mostly adults, perhaps because they had so much more to hide- put on different masks for different situations, and that setting was a huge influence in the presentation: Emmeryn the Guardian-Meeting-With-Your-Teacher and Emmeryn the Older Sister had a few stark differences. One was in vocabulary. Another was in intimidation factor.

Learning that had helped reconcile a few things: sometimes, things were. And sometimes, they weren’t. For example, sometimes Chrom was a avid and dedicated reader, and sometimes, books were about knights and princes and dragons (the best of the best packed a three-in-one combination). He was always a great big brother, but depending on who was around, sometimes it was just more funny to hear Lissa scream about earthworms in her hair, at least up until she went to Mrs. Iris and he had to explain why he had been digging around in the school gardens _again_. (Apparently, treasure-hunting was a non-acceptable answer, which only solidified in his mind the tyranny that came with age.)

There were a few constants, though:

Lines he refused to cross- no matter how entertaining it was to watch certain people overreact, he would never watch them cry. There was… nothing funny about seeing other people sad or upset, and he would take the detention four times over if every hour spent writing lines was another punch in the face for the people who’d pushed his little sister.

Honest and straightforward- sometimes bordering on blunt. If nobody asked, he wouldn’t offer anything; but if they asked, then he would give _exactly_ what was going through his mind. The lesson never seemed to stick, no matter how many times Sully wrestled him into the dirt to try and teach it.

Easily excited, like every other boy his age. Just as easily bored.

Observant.

This was a true universality, because while all other traits could be defied, he couldn’t exactly tell himself to stop noticing things- nor had he reached the age to consider why he might want to. It was possible that every other characteristic was a direct result of this one, and in the end, he would end up gaining so much more from it.

Blue eyes saw almost everything in the classroom. But while he wasn’t old enough to truly understand it all, he was old enough to know when to pretend he hadn’t.

***

He referred to it in his head, half-jokingly, as “bird-watching.”

Similarities were present: careful and stealthy viewing, a requirement to make sure the observed remained entirely unaware of that status. But the Robin Chrom watched referred to a person.

Robin was- strange. (It was the nicest word he’d heard other kids use about him, and they’d stopped saying much when Chrom delivered a few well-aimed kicks.) It might’ve been ironic to point to hair color as a factor, but Chrom was a Lowell, and they had been around since the founding of the town, so in that sense, blue hair had been a part of its history, and- nobody had ever seen white hair before, except for on the dead and the almost-there. It wasn’t a normal hair color. It wasn’t from around here, and…

Neither was Robin.

He’d arrived halfway through the semester, after winter break, with a mom and no dad, and then- lingered. Barely established himself. Most of the rest of the class barely seemed to notice he was there, if they bothered to remember him at all.

None of that was strange to Chrom. He knew that people had to move, sometimes even when it was inconvenient; he lived with two sisters and no parents, and a single lady in charge of the house was hardly an unfamiliar concept to him; and you couldn’t be friends with Olivia and not understand that sometimes, people who lacked presence did so willingly.

The strange part was that Robin was obviously, depressingly, horribly _lonely_. Chrom saw it in the way Robin carried himself- or rather, didn’t, head hanging slightly, eyes to the ground at almost very moment, shoulders sagging and arms hugging an almost too-large book to his chest (and just how lonely did you have to be, to keep books as company? Too much, Chrom had decided). He might’ve heard it in Robin’s voice, but few people could rightfully say they’d heard it at all- words, when they managed to be spoken, were barely a hint of a whisper, disappearing just as quickly as speaker did behind the cover of his book. Robin was lonely, and…

_Why won’t you play with anyone?_

...it seemed to be a status he was determined to maintain.

Not if Chrom had any say in it. Which he would. But only eventually. Certain situations required a certain degree of delicacy, after all, with action taken only at the moment reconnaissance was complete.

So- bird-watching.

Lissa had, rather rudely and not inaccurately, called it spying, and for her efforts received another annelidan visitor. Currently, she was playing kickball with the rest of Chrom’s friends while trying to ignore the remaining traces of slime.

Chrom took the opportunity to quickly and cautiously peer above the bushes at the edge of the sidewalk. (Un) Surprisingly, nothing had changed. Robin continued to sit completely still, eyes fixated on the open book in front of him- or it might’ve appeared that way, to passersby. But it was obviously he wasn’t paying attention to the words on the page- for one, nothing had changed, which meant no pages had turned. And when one looked closely at the eyes, there was a distinct lack of focus.

(Chrom told himself it was only for observation purposes that he kept looking at them, and the resulting discomfort was purely from nerves. It meant nothing that the feeling was similar to those times he’d nearly gotten away with lying before confessing, nor from the fact that it was the first time he’d noticed something- and then ignored it.)

_What are you thinking about?_

Less importantly, _How can you sit still for so long?_

His gaze wandered back from posture to expression…

He almost _threw_ himself back to the ground, even though there had been no possibility of being spotted, partly because it was improper procedure to stare for so long, and partly because it was the only way to break himself out of the trance. He’d gotten distracted. _Again._

(The worst part was, he almost looked forward to it.)

Dirt, as usual, showed no sign of cracking under the impact of a small and admittedly strong-for-his-age punch, even with all of his strength behind it. It proved equally resistant to catching on fire from the heat of embarrassment.

 _...I’m being dumb._ Chrom shook his head, privately thanked whatever higher power was listening that Lissa wasn’t around. _I’m… being really stupid right now._

_I need to wait. That would be the smart thing to do._

_But…_

Chrom looked up, at the top of the bush. And then he turned around.

Just in time to hear the shout.

“I’M GONNA KICK IT!”

There were times when Chrom was truly grateful that Mrs. Iris would rather stay inside and grade papers than supervise recess- it was probably the only situation in which their near daily rounds of kickball could be played, because when Vaike got involved, injury was the least of what was guaranteed.

The part of Chrom’s brain that noticed things processed it quicker than his thoughts could, and he found himself moving before he really knew what he was doing.

_Vaike is about to kick the ball._

It had been, all things considered, rather easy to force himself through the bush. Cuts and scrapes could be dealt with later.

_Vaike is about to kick the ball in the wrong direction._

“Robin!” Chrom shouted.

Robin looked up from his book, eyes wide.

“I think you might want to move!” In the not so far off distance, the sound of rubber impacting rubber-

_Ah._

His first reaction had been to grab Robin and pull him out of the way- it would’ve been a bit rude, perhaps, but better than the alternative of being hit in the face by a kickball, and surely the relief afterwards would cancel out any remaining feelings of irritation. Chrom, in his split-second decision, felt that Robin wouldn’t be offended by the action.

Unfortunately, he was right.

He grabbed Robin on the arm, started to pull- and Robin screamed.

It ended up only being the beginning of one- he almost immediately _pressed_ his hands against his mouth, and the rest escaped as a muffled whimper. His book hit the ground, pages crumpling at the same time as Robin crumbled, collapsed and curled in on himself, shoulders shaking-

Chrom had pulled his hand away the moment Robin had-

_Don’t think, don’t think about it_

(He couldn’t stop remembering it)

-eyes wide with shock the rest of his body had gone numb with, he had expected some kind of reaction but nothing like _this_ -

The kickball slammed into his jaw.

***

Sully had shouted at Vaike for a majority of the walk.

“You absolute-” Followed by a string of words that made Olivia turn as pink as her hair, finished with- “Idiot, you don’t aim for people!”

“I wasn’t aiming for people!” Vaike protested. “Wasn’t aiming for nothing!”

It had escalated from there.

“Does that feel better?” Sumia asked, pressing the ice pack against his face. She was the fastest of his friends, had gotten relief for him after arriving first at the Site of Injury.

“Mm,” Chrom grunted. Then, because it sounded a bit ungrateful, “Thanks.” He held his hand against the ice pack, and she let go.

His jaw ached, certainly. But it wasn’t the true source of the pain.

He recalled the scene with almost agonizing clarity, if only because he wished he could forget. Robin had _frozen_ , perfectly still, too afraid to move, tears clinging to his eyelashes- up until Sumia had approached, and then he had taken his book and _run_.

Most of the sigh was internal. He had been close, if only physically, but it was still more progress than had been made for the past few months, and…

He had made a mistake.

Now was the real problem: identification. Usually, details would reveal themselves upon a reexamination of the situation...

 _What did I do?_ To everyone else, it had been obvious. But to Robin, the act of grabbing had meant- something else.

 _Why did he- react like that?_ Same as above, most likely.

The one he had the most difficulty asking himself: _Can we ever be friends?_ It had been unclear before today and was now charted for a path towards _unlikely_.

_How am I supposed to be friends with him now?_

All very good questions. None of them had very many clear answers.

**Author's Note:**

> Sketch- the first stage of a piece, a rough idea of how things will turn out. It seemed like a good "the story begins" title
> 
> (Hopefully I won't lose motivation halfway through this one. Let's see what happens when I post part of a story BEFORE every chapter is completed.)
> 
> If you liked it, feedback is my lifeblood


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